Basel is the one who bragged on Facebook about having a date with one of Scott Brown's available daughters. He honed his Conservative Stuntcraft as a student at the University of Minnesota-Morris, which is a small, public liberal arts school. (Yes, he went to a public liberal arts school and complained relentlessly about how liberal everyone was. You couldn't get into Bob Jones, Joe?) We mentioned, earlier, the time he set off a racial incident by putting up posters calling for White Males to be Killed (he was making an ironic statement about Racism, which is to say that he doesn't understand what it is and how it works).

Did Joe Basel—one of the gentlemen arrested for attempting to bug Senator Mary Landrieu's…
Read more Read more

Anyway, Joe was apparently the beneficiary of what amounts to affirmative action: the liberal student paper hired him to contribute, not because of his talent or skill at journalism, but because they needed some token conservatives. Joe, oddly, did not quit in disgrace rather than subject himself to the humiliation of being selected over a more qualified white liberal writer!

Advertisement

In an otherwise unremarkable piece, Basel printed a quote from an anonymous source supposedly paraphrasing something insulting the state Majority Leader said. Journalism, ladies and gentlemen:

According to one Morris lobbyist, "Senator Dean Johnson, Majority Leader of the Senate, was extremely rude and verbally stated that none of the legislators were going to listen to the college kids in the capital. He also shared his belief that all college students are about drinking and partying. All this animosity was inserted between snide comments about the Governor and his cronies."

Positively Game Change-esque, right? Maybe this guy does have a future in journalism!

Anyway, many people, including Dean Johnson (who was, seriously, a decent guy and a good public servant and a Lutheran Minister, and not the sort of idiot to say things like this), asked for this to maybe be retracted. Basel's liberal editors and publisher stood behind him, though, and never apologized for anything!

The next year, Basel started a competing conservative newspaper because the one that let him run irresponsible, unsupported anonymous smears was too liberal.

We wonder, just as Ravi wondered why conservatives Aren't Funny, why conservatives produce such shoddy, shitty "journalism" for their dedicated Conservative Journalism projects. (The answer is actually pretty simple: the ones who want to go into conservative advocacy journalism are political hacks with a proud contempt for "facts.")